Samsung phones embedded with 'unremovable' Israeli spyware

Comments

• 0xD@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  The original SMEX article is from May, and thecanary does not add any new information.

  smex.org/open-letter-to-samsung-end-forced-israel…

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  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Did Samsung ever address removing it, or saying the software was useful, instead?

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• Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Somebody convince me not to say fuck it and build my own brick of a phone with an rpi5

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  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Mobile telephony support just comes as a module, so that’s actually the easy part.

    The harder parts are to make the whole thing consume a low enough amount of power that you can keep it running from a non-monster-sized battery, and I suspect that an RPi 5 board isn’t very good for that (hobbyist development boards tend to not have been designed to avoid wasting power, even when the underlying microcontroller/processors is actually decent at it), and integrating an OS with support for a touch interface, especially if you want to avoid Android.

    I mean, it’s not too hard to make a brick sized dumb phone and even have it be a mobile phone powered by AA batteries, but if you want a mobile smartphone, it gets more complex.

    Unless you have the time and skills to take up the challenge you would probably be better of getting something like a Volla phone with Ubuntu Touch or a Pine phone.

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  • DarkSirrush@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    There are a few projects already in existence that might be more convenient, than an rpi5 like fairphones, and I think the grapheneos team is looking to develop something too.

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    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yeah, that’s the more realistic option. Though it would cost several hundred dollars more.

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    • 87Six@lemmy.zip ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Not that I have a better idea, but Graphene os devs I think were found to be scummy by Louis Rossmann at some point.

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  • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Good luck with that

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• homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Social Media Exchange (SMEX), a nonprofit digital human rights organisation focusing on the West Asia/North Africa (WANA) region, has warned people living in these regions that an effective spyware app developed by an Israeli firm is quietly embedded in Samsung smartphones across the region and poses a serious surveillance threat.

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  • squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The region is quite an important part of the message.

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• FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The app’s privacy settings claim that users can disable this data collection by turning off “AppCloud” in the app list.

  They don’t just “claim” that - that’s how Android works lol.

  So in short the whole article could have just been “disable this app and you don’t have to worry about it”. Doesn’t have as much of a tinfoil ring to it I guess?

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• splendid9583@kbin.earth ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  https://www.privacyguides.org/en/mobile-phones/

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  • sefra1@lemmy.zip ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That website is an excellent resource, but they can’t just expect everyone to have money for a pixel, even if privacy is a priority for me and many people, a pixel is just beyond the reach of the large majority of internet users.

    Instead they need to make a curated list of less than ideal but still better than stock alternatives, or else people will just give up and get stock android instead.

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    • Orcocracy@hexbear.net ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yes, considering the average westerner’s privacy is essentially exploited by Google every single day, telling the privacy-conscious person to just shut up and buy the Google phone without discussing alternatives makes this website read like it’s just another ad on an internet filled with ads.

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    • splendid9583@kbin.earth ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I used to think like this. However, if someone says, "The most expensive phone I can afford is embedded with unremovable Israeli spyware, and there is no operating system that is open-source and receives regular security patches available for it, and I can't afford to pay for internet access, so I use the platform that only lets me access Facebook", I'm not sure that there's much I can do to help them. If someone said, "Can I use a phone that costs less because it's subsidized by Facebook while being protected from malware and surveillance?" I'd respond with, "The answer is probably 'no'".
      I'm sure that it's possible to be in a situation where the only choice is to have no internet access at all or to use the internet in a way that makes one vulnerable to surveillance, and I think it's likely that getting more money is the most reliable cure for that situation (and it might be true that no other cure exists).

      privacyguides.org probably has a target audience of people that are being actively targeted by sophisticated government actors, and displaying information about a measure that is inferior to another measure in every way other than cost would make it more likely that someone would use the inferior measure in an inappropriate situation, and that could cause someone to be in physical danger, so it's probably best to just not mention any measure unless it might be superior to all other measures in some situation (without considering monetary cost). For people that are subject to less physical danger but more cost restrictions, it'd probably be better to have a separate website. I do think that such a website would probably have less funding available (since privacyguides.org will probably receive funding from the audience that is mostly unencumbered by resource constraints, so any other website will probably receive less funding) and therefore less expertise available, which would be regrettable (since I do have old phones that I'd like to make more secure).

      There was a time when there was no formal recommendation for computing hardware from privacyguides.org at all, so having one at all is an improvement compared to the past. It's unfortunate that there aren't two options that meet the documented criteria, but having one is better than having none.
      For now, the best we can hope for is probably a phone model that meets relevant criteria (or where the only unmet criteria could be met due to new software being made available) becoming more popular, such that its price comes down due to having an economy of scale. Hopefully that will be a phone model not influenced by Google.

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    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Pixels are also running on poor hardware. This has always been the case, but recent releases are showing really poor cpu performance compared to competitors.

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    • blah3166@piefed.social ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      pixels are supported for 7 years now, and older second-hand phone is still an option. but agree on privacy being a spectrum and not an absolute.

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• NoodlePoint@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The region is a market where it’s either Samsung, Apple, or any of the known Chinese brands – Huawei, Redmi, OPPO, Vivo, etc. – which sell cheaper than either of them while carrying some premium features, and unfortunately most have to buy those phones due to either FOMO or because some are very cheap. Anyone engaged in more sensitive political positions may have to keep on using dumbphones.

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• Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I have yet to run into spyware that couldn’t easily be uninstalled with a few ADB commands.

  That is unless—of course—you consider OneUI/Android itself to be spyware (which it is). Privacy in the modern world is dead. It has been for over 20 years now.

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  • quick_snail@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Nah, laptops can be absolutely safe. I recommended TAILS or QubesOS

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    • Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Tails is amazing and I’m glad we have something like that, but it is not practical for every day use IMO.

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• millerjutsu@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Look into braxtech.io a privacy respecting phone without tracking. Comes with iode’ is who preserves and protects privacy as well.

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  • quick_snail@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Hard to take an OS seriously when they don’t even sign their releases

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